A New Alaskan Starter is Here!

A friend who used to live in Alaska in the 70's came by yesterday and gave me a jar of his starter he picked up there. According to him it was old when it was given to him and there is no way to estimate how old it really is but it is one of the most active starters I have seen in awhile. 

He abuses the heck out of it and it survives year after year. In fact, it sits in his fridge and gets used once or twice a year and only gets fed when he uses it. So what happens is the little voracious sourdough beasties go dormant. To activate, he pulls it out of the fridge and stirs the liquid hooch back in and feeds it. He even uses, get this, tap water! Who'da thought?

I activated some and tried it out with my San Francisco Bread recipe and it was nice and sour. I made the mistake of covering it while letting it rise so the surface looked the moon with pockmarks everywhere.

Praise from a Canadian Customer
"Just FYI, I started the Best Darn Old Alaskan starter on sat or sun and I can hardly contain it :). It is doing very well.

Just wanted to let you know. I will bake with it on Saturday and really looking forward to it!"

James G. Victoria BC Canada

To simplify the updating process of my blog entries I have created a single ORDER page you can go to by clicking here. As the blog slowly grows in size (a few posts each month) it becomes an arduous labor updating each and every one of them so hopefully this will make the pages easier to peruse and more enjoyable. Thank you.

Valentina’s Sourdough Raised Donuts

Try these Sourdough Donuts using the sourdough starter of your choice. In my case I used Valentina’s San Francisco Sourdough Starter. Prepare the starter in advance. If your starter is in the fridge, pull it out the morning before you make these and feed it. When the starter is nice and active (bubbly and doubled in size) you can begin. I decided to make donut holes instead and they were the yummiest!

Ingredients:

1 Cup Valentina’s San Francisco Sourdough Starter

2 Cups Room Temp bottled or filtered water

1 Cup Granulated Sugar

½ teaspoon Salt

3 Tablespoons Olive Oil

5-6 Cups White Flour

Combine all the ingredients in a mixer. Add flour until the sides of the bowl wipe clean.

Place the dough in a greased bowl and let it sit for several hours covered while it develops a sour flavor. Typically this takes anywhere from 12-24 hours.

The next day remove the dough from the bowl and stretch-roll it out to about a half inch thick. Using a donut cutter make your donuts and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet and let them rise until double in size. 

Then deep fry them. Coat in granulated sugar immediately or ley cool and cover in your favorite sugar glaze.

For a stronger sour taste try Alaska Sam’s Sourdough Starter.

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To simplify the updating process of my blog entries I have created a single ORDER page you can go to by clicking here. As the blog slowly grows in size (a few posts each month) it becomes an arduous labor updating each and every one of them so hopefully this will make the pages easier to peruse and more enjoyable. Thank you.